Oh wow. I would LOL because, seriously? But this is actually pretty fucked up:

A fetus has been scheduled as a legislative witness in Ohio on a unique bill that proposes outlawing abortions after the first heartbeat can be medically detected.

Faith2Action, the anti-abortion group that has targeted Ohio to pilot the measure, called the in-utero witness the youngest to ever come before the House Health Committee at nine weeks old.

Faith2Action president Janet Folger Porter said the intent is to show lawmakers who will be affected by the bill, which is opposed by Ohio Right to Life and abortion rights groups as unconstitutional.

An aide to committee Chairman Lynn Wachtmann said a pregnant woman will be brought before the committee and an ultrasound image of her uterus will be projected onto a screen. The heartbeat of the fetus will be visible in color.

Sometimes I swear that I’m living in bizarro world. Some dude should go wack off in COngress and toss his sperm on the podium so that it can testify – that will win the award for “youngest testimony.” OMG!

Yeah, meanwhile in Tennessee, legislators have introduced the strongest “anti-Sharia” legislation introduced yet–potentially criminalizing things like, oh, praying five times a day. Which is only related inasmuch as I wanted to say: Fuck states’ rights.

What gets to me here is that to work this little skit, they have to bring in a women who without the ultrasound no one would be able to tell whether or not she’s pregnant (pregnancy doesn’t show at 9 weeks). So basically they’re expecting people to see a baby when they look at a woman, and by extention, see a baby when they look at any woman.

Of course they’re going to bring a woman who will coo over her baby and not have any problem with having an organism that you can’t even tell is there be more important than her, but can’t a pro-choice woman (who may or may not be 9 weeks pregnant) testify to show the problem with this? Stand up and say hey, you can’t tell if I’m pregnant or not, but you’re going to try to make emotional decisions about me when you don’t even know me? It would have to be worded a lot better than that, but does that sound like a good idea to anyone else?

Huh, interesting. This only outlaws abortion after the first heartbeat is detected. I thought the anti-choicers believed that life began at conception? Last I heard, there were 9 weeks between conception and heartbeat. So are the proponents of this bill admitting that life begins at heartbeat now, as opposed to conception? And if not, why make this distinction?

I think the heartbeat has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with the tropes of the abortion Prohibitionist movement. They have long emphasized fetal heartbeat as evidence that the fetus is a person distinct from the woman it lives inside, despite the fact that if it’s a pre-viable fetus, then by definition that heartbeat depends on the woman’s own life.

Along those lines, thanks to those who have pointed out that here, once again, abortion prohibitionists are trying to blank out women so they may more conveniently focus on fetuses.

Hasn’t this all been done before, and several years ago too? John Edwards, trial lawyer-turned- Dem VP Candidate 2004-turned-adulterous jerk, won several cases where he describe
d/”channeled its thoughts”/”spoke in the persona of” the fetus (which was then born with birth defects, spurring these lawsuits). He got filthy rich and politically prominent by speaking the thoughts of a fetus…at least this time it’s just an ultrasound…

If this grandstanding piece of blankety-blank bill actually passes (and why are they wasting taxpayer money on this anyway?) I wonder what they will do to women who have the audacity to leave the state to obtain an abortion.

The heartbeat thing baffles me. The heart does not beat because there is brain activity. It beats because that is what its cells are designed to do as reflexive motor activity. It does not make the foetus any more or less a person than does its capacity to shit.

Tim, this has nothing to do with court– the fetus is “testifying” before a legislature. There’s a long tradition of calling asinine witnesses. You may recall that Congress called Colbert to testify on immigration which, much as I like the guy, was absurd. Elmo the puppet once testified before Congress. As a precedent this means nothing.

Can we get a biologist who works with heart cells to bring some in a dish to testify, too? Because one of the really awesome things about heart cells is that they will beat on their own, in a petri dish if that’s where you’ve got them. They don’t need to be part of a full-fledged heart or even something as sophisticated as an embryo.

Also, we should be highly suspicious of the fetus who is testifying, on the grounds that if it’s really a fetus and 9 weeks old, it might be lying about its age. Depending on whether that’s 9 weeks gestational age, since last menstrual period, etc, it might actually not be a fetus yet.

I can almost guarantee it will have an Elmo-like voice and speak in baby tawk.

Alternatively, it will be a 10 minute ultrasound video with a beating heart and no other sound and then saying something like fetuses can’t speak for themselves and then say in the last 10 minutes x number of fetuses were aborted and then have a picture of a swastika or something.

(Also, can that be a thing now? Unlike most guys, who have to whip up a batch of sperm to order, the majority of us ladies have a whole ton of potential fetuses sitting around in our ovaries all the time… shouldn’t they get the right to vote? And don’t get me started on how young you start making those little buggers! A person in a person in a — It’s like Inception, but with gametes. And I’m pretty sure I never got to exercise all their tiny gametey rights… Where are my retroactive partial childhood votes that my developing eggs didn’t get? Can I use them all now?)

If there’s anything I learned in developmental biology it was that a heart beat isn’t really a big freaking deal. The heart forms long before the brain is finished simply because the fetus needs a circulatory system to get beyond a certain size. Brains aren’t really that important, so they get finished up and start working later.

Despite what some might think at times, a human fetus isn’t really any different from that of other animals in early stages. The presence of a beating heart does not a person make. It’s still a non-sentient lump of tissue, only now part of it is pulsing. It’s not an independent, feeling, thinking, seperate human being yet, it’s a brainless collection of tissues that’s growing inside an actual human being and requires the use of her organs to live. I don’t see how a pre-sentient fetus should be given greater ownership of a woman’s body than she is.

LOL. FYI, I am stealing that idea. I think I’ll open my discussion of reproductive rights with a slide show of various random objects that are indistinguishable from a 9 week old fetus ending with a map of Greenland. Far more interesting that my current historical survey.

I would like to have a fetus come testify about how it isn’t getting enough nutrient from what its mother’s healthy bloodstream could normally provide to it, so it’s pumping chemicals through her placenta into her to raise her blood pressure to alarmingly high levels and suppressing the activity of her pancreas because the fetus wants more blood sugar, dammit.

How about a fetus coming and testifying about how it’s taking all the calcium out of its mom’s teeth and bones, because it needs the calcium, dammit, she’s an old lady and she’s only got another 60 years or so of life, while it’s a fetus and it needs the calcium RIGHT NOW. Mom can just have all her teeth fall out and get osteoporosis.

Perhaps a fetus could report how much fun it is to kick Mom in the bladder and make her pee herself. Endless lulz!

Simply because something has a heartbeat does not imply you need to let it move into your body, steal your calcium, raise your blood pressure and sugar, and give you urinary incontinence, unless YOU choose it. Otherwise, Congressman, I want your pancreas. I have a heartbeat too! Therefore I deserve your pancreas, if you aren’t hypoglycemic or diabetic, because I am hypoglycemic and therefore I need a new pancreas! I could use your bones too while I’m at it.

Alexandra: The worst part about it? Some women will probably vote for this bill. At least, am always bamboozled when I hear a woman (or two) voted for some crazy bill like that to pass. Sigh…

Indeed. The legislator behind the law itself is a woman, I believe.

It’s baffling to me that there are some who not only don’t see this as a cheap stunt but who also don’t see what a dangerous and absurd slippery slope when applied to reality. But this is all about emotion and ideology, not facts. Like I said, baffling. Not surprising.

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